Prolific writer and sharp-minded critic
Gore Vidal in excerpts from
this interview in
LA Weekly:When it comes to this Bush administration, are you really talking about despots per se? Or is this really just one more rather corrupt and foolish Republican administration?
No. We are talking about despotism. I have read not only the first PATRIOT Act but also the second one, which has not yet been totally made public nor approved by Congress and to which there is already great resistance. An American citizen can be fingered as a terrorist, and with what proof? No proof. All you need is the word of the attorney general or maybe the president himself. You can then be locked up without access to a lawyer, and then tried by military tribunal and even executed. Or, in a brand-new wrinkle, you can be exiled, stripped of your citizenship and packed off to another place not even organized as a country -- like Tierra del Fuego or some rock in the Pacific. All of this is in the USA PATRIOT Act. The Founding Fathers would have found this to be despotism in spades. And they would have hanged anybody who tried to get this through the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Hanged.
Speaking of elections, is George W. Bush going to be re-elected next year?
No. At least if there is a fair election, an election that is not electronic. That would be dangerous. We don't want an election without a paper trail. The makers of the voting machines say no one can look inside of them, because they would reveal trade secrets. What secrets? Isn't their job to count votes? Or do they get secret messages from Mars? Is the cure for cancer inside the machines? I mean, come on. And all three owners of the companies who make these machines are donors to the Bush administration. Is this not corruption? So Bush will probably win if the country is covered with these balloting machines. He can't lose. [...] If we use old-fashioned paper ballots and have them counted in the precinct where they are cast, he will be swept from office.
Well, I certainly hope that Gore is wrong about Dieblod et al voting machines, but he's correct about the paper trail. Electronic voting is only feasible if they print a paper ballot receipt to be reviewed and deposited in a locked box by
the voters themselves -- which begs the question: if these companies are not indeed corrupt, as Vidal claims, and they don't wish to give up their secrets, as the companies claim, why not have the machines simply spit out a receipt to be reviewed by the voter for accuracy and paper trail backup? And beyond corruption, heck, lightening could strike, earthquakes could happen -- why not print an
external paper receipt?
I disagree with Vidal about Afghanistan ("we have bombed two countries in a row that did nothing to us") and of course he is typically strident, but it's a great interview, and his new book Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson sounds fascinating, and much more than your typical regurgitated pseudo-historical drivel.
Crossposted at ^ Points West ^ : takin' the bullsh*t by the horns